About me

Hi, I’m Bas Tichelaar. I worked as an IT architect and consultant, and have founded several initiatives and startups. My main areas of technical expertise are Cloud, DevOps and architecture. But I really love to do is to start new initiatives and get things up and running. That’s what makes me tick.

That’s why I started Experimentor. I like to help you setting up experiments in order to improve your business goals. Below are some tips when you would like to start experimenting yourself. If you need help, get in contact and we’ll have a cup of coffee.

Start experimenting

Every good idea should start with an experiment. Define the success critera, create a MVP and measure the outcome. Based on the results, you can modify the MVP and repeat the cycle. To facilitate a culture of experimentation, you need mature DevOps teams, an agile way of working an a scalable cloud infrastructure.

Dare to learn

As a consultant I worked with small startups as well as large enterprises. I helped them implementing new technologies and adopting a new way of working. One of the most important aspects was knowledge transfer: once my assignment was completed, the team needed to continue the work we started. My approach was to make the students the teachers: let them teach others how to use the new technology. They were not afraid to learn, and became teachers themselves.

Practice making mistakes

Innovation only happens when mistakes are made. So the better and faster you are at making mistakes, the more likely you will succeed in the end. That’s why experimentation needs to be cheap and save.

Focus on outcome, not on output.

Before starting an experiment, begin with the end in mind. Define metrics which will indicate whether your experiment is successful or not. It can help to use OKR’s (Objective, Key Results). Start with defining an Objective That is ambitious, and which you might never be able to complete. Next, define the Key Results that indicate you are on the right track. Key Results need to be measurable. Only then you can look back and judge whether or not you’ve completed the Key Result. This method is widely used by companies like Google, Facebook and Spotify, but fits experimentation really well.